Let's outbreak a plague

[garrinchaya]

I've never been into the Python code. My bad. But I just want topen a thread about a way to introduce our old friend the black plague in RAF.
The four points we have to consider are =
how the plague comes up, how to propagate it, what impact should it have and how to make it disappear.

The outbreak

A city with a very bad health should be the main generator. Let's say something like from -4, you have 10% of probability to meet with the black plague in your city. Each point below can bring 5% more of probability.

The propagation

We don't have rats in RAF, but two elements can nervertherless come here into play :

the trade road : Each connected city by the trade has a propability of 50% to receive a visit of the disease. Each health point below or above 0give 5% more or less probability.

The units :
Each unit visiting a affected city itself or its radius may be contamined (let's say 50%). Each contagious unit visiting a healthy city can bring the plague on the same way that with the trade road (50% +/- health points)

The damages :

The units : each contagious unit loses .2 hit point / turn.
The city : Let's apply a - 15 health point. The people are killed here by the famine and not directly by the plague, but that should bring sufficient misfortunes to the city.
The stability : Is there already a negative bonus, if you experience the famine?

How to make it stop

The units : No andidote means no solution, only the death will release them from suffering.

The city : After 5 turns, you have 50% of probability to get out. Each points below or above -19 on the health scale brings 5 % less or more.

Misc.

The discovery of the medecine tech must put an end to the plague.
The regular check will slow down anyway the game.
Each city that has already experienced the plague in the past has 10% bonus, because of the immunity improvement.
The Aztec and Indian can get a 20% negative bonus.

 

[LuKo]

I'd like your idea but it is unnecessary.

 

[Elhoim]

A well tought idea, but it shouldn´t be a priority for now since more checks=more slowdowns, and plagues isn´t the most fun of additions.

 

[Rhye]

sorry to disagree here, but plague IS a top priority, and I am already being designing the model since a few days (I would have liked to keep this a surprise, as usual, but there are too many threads talking about plague right now to shut up).
While not very fun, it will be a key factor to reduce the number of units and speed up the game.
My model is rather different from garrinchaya's, as I need to optimize the whole thing, but the factors will be similar

 

[LuKo]

I'm so happy that you disagree with us

 

[thenooblet22]

Just to throw in my idea: I think the plagues should be identical to the (invisible) religious system. Each region (Asia, Mediterranian, Africa, etc.) would consist of a general epedemic of that area (a holy city if you will). With the establishment of trade routes, the epedemic (religions) would spread to other civilization cities. Each epedemic would carry at least somewhat 10 Unhealthiness penalties, possible Unhappiness as well (fear you know). Building immunities, each turn the Unhealthiness would decrease one by one, until its gone (with the counter epedemic [religion]). Settlers trained in cities with counter epedemic (religion) will carry on the counter epedemics to the city they found. This would also solve the problem with the New World stronghold. With the sudden contact with most the world, the regional epedemics would devastate the populations.

I hope the plague feature will be similar to this. If you could Rhye, can you give us an idea of what your plans for this are?

 

[Psyringe]

The easiest way to implement plagues is to implement them as (pseudeo)-religions. This way, the propagation mechanism is already in the game (spread via trade routes), and the plague effects can be coded similarly to the religion effects.

I'm curious how it turns out. No true history simulation can be complete without the event that eradicated half of Europe. Plagues might also be a welcome gameplay mechanic in order to weaken established civilizations in favor of new civilizations to emerge later.

 

[thenooblet22]

The easiest way to implement plagues is to implement them as (pseudeo)-religions. This way, the propagation mechanism is already in the game (spread via trade routes), and the plague effects can be coded similarly to the religion effects.

I'm curious how it turns out. No true history simulation can be complete without the event that eradicated half of Europe. Plagues might also be a welcome gameplay mechanic in order to weaken established civilizations in favor of new civilizations to emerge later.

Yes, like...

Spoiler :

Just to throw in my idea: I think the plagues should be identical to the (invisible) religious system. Each region (Asia, Mediterranian, Africa, etc.) would consist of a general epedemic of that area (a holy city if you will). With the establishment of trade routes, the epedemic (religions) would spread to other civilization cities. Each epedemic would carry at least somewhat 10 Unhealthiness penalties, possible Unhappiness as well (fear you know). Building immunities, each turn the Unhealthiness would decrease one by one, until its gone (with the counter epedemic [religion]). Settlers trained in cities with counter epedemic (religion) will carry on the counter epedemics to the city they found. This would also solve the problem with the New World stronghold. With the sudden contact with most the world, the regional epedemics would devastate the populations

However, I'd rather not have encoded plagues cause that would sap the fun out of the game.

 

[Elhoim]

I'm so happy that you disagree with us

Yeah, me too

 

[Rhye]

I hope the plague feature will be similar to this. If you could Rhye, can you give us an idea of what your plans for this are?

In order to make this addition useful for game speed, it shouldn't be "heavy".
This means that, for instance, I'm not attaching any info on single units.

As for the rest, I still can't say, I've designed it but I need to write it first, and then to try it

 

[Mainiac]

I don't think trade routes are the best spreaders of plagues. Generally when ancient people's heard about plagues they would quarentine the plagued areas. So trade routes wouldnt act as trade spreaders except possibly in the very early stages.

 

[Shadowlord]

The problem is, quarantines likely won't do crap if there's an incubation period of at least several days. Some infected people (or rats and fleas, etc) will get out before anyone in power realizes what's happening and imposes the quarantine.

Also I'd like to note that real-world diseases often seem to have a tradeoff between how infectious they are and how deadly they are - The cold spreads incredibly well but is only a minor inconvenience. HIV has an incredibly low likelihood of infecting someone in any particular encounter*, but will eventually cause the death of anyone it does infect.

* = Source: Michael Worobey's lecture on disease evolution and HIV, available as a podcast on the University of Arizona's website. Here's a link to the page with the podcast download. It's a very interesting lecture, by the way.

Of course, something unkillable* with a low chance of spreading, given numerous opportunities to try to spread, will eventually succeed.

* = HIV viruses themselves aren't technically unkillable, but the body never seems to win the war against them when there are many - unless you're immune to it.

There ARE people who have partial or seemingly full immunity to HIV. The same mutation which provides that also protects against smallpox and the black plague, but seems to increase susceptibility to West Nile virus.

Will there be deliberate disease warfare (firing diseased corpses into cities, giving someone smallpox-infected blankets, genetically engineering a superbug?)?

One more thing to say: I'd like to caution that there needs to be safeguards against a deadly disease infecting an entire continent and never going away (due to having spread so much that when one city gets over the disease, it is immediately reinfected). In my own experiments with simple(ish) disease simulation in the past (Mostly in a low-population MMO-like setting, with around 100 active characters and around 5-20 on at any given time, but letting rat NPCs be infected and spread it as well), these things stood out:

1. Temporary immunity is ineffective at ending a disease. If the disease spreads to the entire population, someone will be reinfected very quickly after their immunity ends.
2. A disease with an incubation periods of just a couple days, with no symptoms during the incubation period, which can still spread during the incubation period, will spread VERY rapidly, and quarantining will not stop it. Of course this will be more dramatic in more modernized areas, since a disease cannot spread from england to china in a week if it takes months for anyone to travel between them.
3. Having, say, 10% of the population be immune will not stop a disease from spreading. It just means that these 10% will be OK while everyone else is suffering from the disease.
4. To design a virtual disease which ends without technological cures, and without a global off switch, requires that people become immune to the disease after being infected once or twice and that the disease does not kill, or that some people are immune to begin with and the non-immune all die off (which would basically cause the collapse of entire civilizations).
5. It is very easy for a simulated disease to spread far more effectively than you expected. For example, one which would spread to the entire world and plague everyone forever could have a: 100% chance of infection on contact, no adaptive immunity for victims, does not kill victims, has an incubation period, spreads during the incubation period, and there is no permanent cure. But you could even lower the infection chance to 10% and it would still do it. You could remove the incubation period, and it would still spread before people realize they're in danger. And if you made it deadly, allowing adaptive immunity would do nothing to stop it, as people would be dead or crippled before they could become immune.

Also, I don't think medicine should be a magic bullet to stop all disease. We have quite a lot of diseases in the real world still, and many of them, like HIV, rapidly adapt to become immune to the drugs used to fight them (This is why people are given drug cocktails, since it's less likely that one of the viruses will evolve immunity to all the drugs at the same time).

 

[SadoMacho]

Eusebius World Religions has plagues now, he uses pseudo religions, maybe at idea?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=4975296

 

[Rhye]

Eusebius World Religions has plagues now, he uses pseudo religions, maybe at idea?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=4975296

thanks, I'm gonna try it.
However I have a feeling that plagues will spread too slowly. I want to compress the disasters into no more than 10 turns per civ and spread fast from civ to civ.

 

[Talkie_Toaster]

Yay!! I always wondered why there weren't more disasters in civ, like plague, volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes etc. and now one's being included, woo!

 

[Sovietof17]

Uh oh, native american civilizations, watch out

 

[SkippyT]

Uh oh, native american civilizations, watch out

No more Size 10 Teotiuacan for Aztecs or a Size 15 Berlin by 1400.

 

[Phallus]

Tenochtitlan was a pretty large city in 1400.

 

[Rhye]

thanks, I'm gonna try it.
However I have a feeling that plagues will spread too slowly. I want to compress the disasters into no more than 10 turns per civ and spread fast from civ to civ.

it was indeed useful for adding icons, but as for plagues, I wasn't impressed. They were "founded" on tech discovery like religions and even have a holy city!
I'm sticking with my model

 

[GoodGame]

Plague, at least to the level of CIV3 is very necessary. Yay RHYE!!!